Kepler Planet Hunting Mission Ends
FWIW @NASAKepler has discovered 2,681 confirmed exoplanets and 2,899 candidate exoplanets. Assuming that that they're all confirmed that's 5,580 planets at a cost $125,448.03 each. pic.twitter.com/p84pT10x29
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) October 30, 2018
NASA Retires Kepler Space Telescope
“After nine years in deep space collecting data that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets – more planets even than stars – NASA’s Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel needed for further science operations. NASA has decided to retire the spacecraft within its current, safe orbit, away from Earth. Kepler leaves a legacy of more than 2,600 planet discoveries from outside our solar system, many of which could be promising places for life.”
Perhaps in the future a BFS will locate it and take it into its cargo hold where in a “shirt-sleeve” environment technicans will repair and refuel it before releasing it to work once again for science.
That could take a while. Kepler is on a solar orbit, which is just slightly different from the Earth’s. The orbital period is very nearly 53 weeks, so it drifts away from the Earth at about 7 deg. per year. That’s probably too far away for BFR by the time it’s flying (well, it would be a long trip not a quick jaunt.) It will drift back in about half a century. By then, I hope we have something better than BFR, and Kepler would be hopelessly obsolete. At that point, recovery either for examination (as an extremely long duration exposure facility) or as a museum piece might be a better option.
It would be a long flight, but it could be a good training cruise for the future cadets of an International Space Academy. Just the type of mission needed to build the skills they need to become space explorers. Yes, the BFS creates many opportunities to change how space is explored.
I sense a Star Trek original series plot line… first mission for the new Enterprise and her crew.
No, the Kepler telescope if located and retrieved by a BFS should be retire to the Air & Space museum.
The retrieving BFS should be able to deployed a cluster of telescopes similar to Kepler prior to retrieval. With up to date spacecraft technology and serviceable in orbit.
Consideration should be given to deploying several high power communications and data cache spacecrafts as part of the cluster.
Or perhaps another museum. The Air and Space Museum is, unfortunately, already short on display space. Even the new annex in Virginia just gave them room for items which were in storage (mostly.) If and when Kepler (and Hubble and who knows how many other famous spacecraft) are recovered, Air and Space probably won’t have a place to put them. Since that is all in a distant and speculative future, why not consider putting it in the museum of spaceflight at Mare Tranquillitatis?
The vaccum there would probably be good for preservation, and domes could keep the dust out.
Yes, that would certainly be better for preservation than what the Air Force managed to do for the last XB-70, until their museum got funding to get it inside and out of the rain. Long term preservation also reminds me of a lecture Byrd gave to scientists going to Antarctica during the IGY (1957 to 1959.) He warned them not to fall into a crevasses. But he also said, as a joke, that after a few hundred years anyone who did fall into a crevasses would be in much better condition than the rest of us.
There have to be a Moon Base Alpha or equivalent before there is a Museum of spaceflight at Mare Tranquillitatis.
Moon Base Alpha? I know Mr. Musk is bad about schedules and deadlines, and Mr. Bezos doesn’t tell us much about Blue Origin schedules. But, in 50 years, I’d be very disappointed if we didn’t have a Hilton there, not just a crummy little Moon Base. (Well, to be honest, I probably won’t be around to be disappointed in fifty years, and I know people had similar expectations for the Moon fifty years ago, but you know what I mean…)
Well Mr. Musk did twitted Moon Base Alpha and 2025. Of course any Musk timeline is inspirational.
You should see some sort of Lunar outpost in about 10 years if Musk is still running SpaceX.
There have been many obituaries for Kepler in the past day, but I just remembered something people seem to have forgotten. In addition to finding planets, Kepler made many discoveries about stars. The unprecedented precision of the measurements showed unexpected and (at the time, theoretically impossible) sorts of close binary stars, and allowed helioseismic estimates of the age versus spin rate of stars which were old enough to have drifted away from their siblings. And probably other things I didn’t hear about. Those discoveries were not part of the mission’s goals. They are the sort of unexpected things we discover when we make new observations and just see what is out there. I think Kepler deserves credit for that as well as for discovering so many planets.
There’s a good run down at the always-readable Centauri Dreams: https://www.centauri-dreams…
I can’t recommend that site enough for those of us interested in the trek towards extra-solar exploration. Paul Gilster reviews new papers, several per week.
So now there are two Keplers in the history books.